Don't Go in the Woods...Alone! (1981)

 That this movie exists is probably some small miracle. The director seemed to have had his share of issues with the sound, in particular. That only added to the sweet atrociousness of this disaster of a wilderness slasher film. The *wilderness survival* genre with roots back to Deliverance (1972) seemed to produce few films of any real consequence years and years after those dueling banjos and "squeal like a pig". Thennnnnn there are those realllllllly bad products of the wilderness survival genre that accosts us with serious mental flogging. I'd say Don't Go in the Woods is a good, no great, example of mind flagellation. I would say Don't Go in the Woods drains intellect right out of you. When someone asks me a simple question I should answer right off the top, I'm sure I'd have to stop for a moment and think real hard after watching Don't Go in the Woods. But I love this piece of shit. I just love it. The dubbing, MY GOD, the dubbing...I challenge you to find an equal in terms of the rubbish dubbing. Yes, there are plenty of Italian horror dubbing examples, sure. But I still think Don't Go in the Woods brings the pain right at those Italian horror films and Godzilla films that populated television late night. And, because the director lost footage of Craig's (James P Hayden) camp fire story, you hear him talking but only see closeups of the ladies in awkward expressions while listening. And the editing of the movie has murder sequences shot in awkward angles, frenetic and out of sorts, as if the director was stumbling over rocks and hills but because he had just enough film to get through what was in his script James Bryan was like, "Fuck it. This is the film I'm making and if they don't like it, boo-hoo." And how could I really compete with that logic? So Bryan gave us this dubbing nightmare with kill scenes that sort of come and go with very little structure or clarity. One guy I think is a bird watcher with binoculars gets his arm cut off after the killer throws rocks at his face...you'd think the director was stumbling through the forest and wherever the camera goes, Bryan was totally chill with the results. The results are the results. I think Bryan should just tell all us critics, "I got two words for ya....SUCK IT!!!!"

This is a campfire story with the storyteller completely out of the shot

Dick and Cherry in their love van with Just Married written in magic marker

Okay, so the plot: 

There are these woods. People make the mistake of going into them. People die. Law enforcement are forced to get involved, though they really don't want to. Lots of violence ensues. Two couples go to the woods, with one of them ALWAYS giving tips on how to behave.

So Dick and Cherry in the "love van". The dubbing for them is especially glorious. "DICK? DICK?" There is that iconic Farrah Fawcett poster on the ceiling of the love van. That popped me. Anytime I see Farrah, my heart smiles. I could go off script and talk about Farrah, but there is Dick with his gun going after that Peeping Tom "pencil-neck geek" and Cherry begging for him not to leave. And whoever that Peeping Tom is makes sure to bloody up Dick, break the windows, frighten an unprepared Cherry, and with some serious strength, push the entire van down a cliff. You can hear Cherry inside the van, somehow still alive, before it (and her) goes up in flames. Aaaaaaaannnnnddddd CUT TO THE NEXT SCENE. 

In perhaps the darkest turn of the film, the killer strikes a mother painting a vista while her bouncing little girl is just barely at a distance. The killer uses a hunting knife to just bludgeon that mother (with the shades) repeatedly, with lots of film blood just splattering everywhere. And the bouncy with no child to put the button on just what the killer is capable of. What sort of throws that scene out of wack is the 70s score with its "WOWM!!!" and "WOMMM!!!" That's the nature of the film. Nothing ever quite works. And that is why the film is such a fun abomination. In the score, the composer even uses this rattle at such odd times. Oh and when the voice actors on the dubbing are to elicit high emotion, they really lay into that mic full-bore. Lots of pounding on the soundtrack to get our adrenaline pumping. That and "NOOOOOO!!!!!! OH NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"

"Peter?! Peter?! I don't like it."

In all seriousness, though. This has to be the busiest damn woods the area had seen in quite some time. The wilderness maniac must have thought he hit the mother lode. Why the mountain man wearing necklace bottles and animal skins gives pirate "ARRSS!!" is anyone's guess. Maybe he observed animals who growl and took on that trait perhaps?

This idyll has dubbed "wilderness killer growl"

Old review was a day before my birthday in August of 2008:

Irresistible hunk of wilderness slasher trash regarding a grotesquely filthy homicidal mountain man who viciously attacks any camping tourist who enters his neck of the woods. I guess he might be a cannibal as well since he stores the bodies of the fallen in bags, placed inside his makeshift house, where a private collection of his victims are also present. While most victims are merely presented as lambs to the slaughter(..and artist, an ornithologist, wheel-chair cripple), the film does follow four backpackers, Peter(Jack McClelland), Ingrid(Mary Gail Artz), Craig(James Hayden)and Joanie(Angie Brown)who spend a great deal of time either arguing or pulling pranks on each other. They will eventually fall prey to the maniac who thoroughly enjoys hunting down his quarry and hacking away at them with a home-made spear(..a long stick with a blade on the end which sheds a hell of a lot of blood). While Joanie watches from her sleeping bag, hung from a tree(..by boyfriend Craig, whose the type of know-it-all who enjoys the authoritative sound of his own voice as he informs the others of the ways of living in the wilderness), Craig is sliced and diced while Peter, who has seen the killer and made a great escape, hunts for Ingrid. Joanie, separated from her friends, must find shelter while Peter and Ingrid attempt to find any sign of civilization, each trying to avoid being hacked to pieces by the demented psycho.

Bottom line, this film is about a maniac savagely attacking innocent folks who are minding their own business. The film must be set during tourist season because the killer has quite a list of victims to dispatch. The camera-work is mostly following the actions of the characters as they move throughout the woods..I guess this would explain why the film is so heavily dubbed. Layered like a lot of low-budget slashers with a synth score, the director often shoots the picturesque landscape of Utah, I'm guessing, to establish that the killer has plenty of territory to hide and roam as those from the city infiltrate his home opening up themselves to certain terror. The dialogue and dubbing is indeed cringe-worthy, no doubt, and there's some really mind-bogglingly stupid behavior exhibited by certain survivors who escape only to re-enter the woods. The director obviously had a limited budget to work with and the knife and machete stabbings are heavily edited with lots of blood splattering to and fro, cutting away from showing the weapons actually penetrating the bodies of those attacked. I found some of the killings rather effective because, despite not displaying how the blade truly slices flesh, the murders are so savage and unrelentingly sadistic that the menace behind the attacks left an impression. The film doesn't pretend to be anything other than a slasher where victims are brutally slain by a nutcase. The Utah setting probably enhances this film despite it's unoriginal plot and rather mundane characters/performances. I won't lie, though, when I say that I had fun with this one. The ending, reflecting an infant the sicko kidnapped, is a hoot. The most creative kill would have to be how the killer brutally stabs a couple who were together in a sleeping bag, thrown over a tree and stabbed repeatedly(..the director even shows their reactions inside the bag!).

To put a final stamp on this dreck, the inclusion of a guy in a wheelchair huffing it and getting that head taken clean off, not to mention, that two make it out of the woods in one piece only to return to the wilderness (?!) explains everything about how this film's mere structure of oddball characters (and decisions about going into the woods!) compliments the entire ineptitude from start to the finish.